My Top Posts of 2021

Top posts of 2021 on Twine, branching scenarios, time estimates, portfolios, instructional design pay rates, and more.

Today, I’m sharing two categories of my top posts of 2021. The first category is the top posts that I wrote and published this year, excluding updates of old posts. The second category includes the top posts by overall views, regardless of when I actually published them. Catch up on anything you missed during this year, or see the highlights from my archives.

My Top Posts of 2021

Top 5 posts published this year

All 5 of these posts have been viewed over 500 times. Twine was the focus of two of my top five posts in 2021; the other three all mention Twine.

How I Built a Chat Simulation in 2 Hours: See how I built a simple chat simulation in a few hours using Twine and the Trialogue story format to create a forced choice chat simulation.

Presentations on Scenario-Based Learning and More: This post includes links to recordings of my presentations on scenario-based learning, as well as podcast interviews and other topics.

Visual Design for Scenarios in Twine: Create a polished visual design for scenarios in Twine using enchant macros in Harlowe, following these step-by-step directions.

Tools for Building Branching Scenarios: When would you use Twine, Storyline, Rise, or other tools for building branching scenarios? It depends on the project and goals.

My Top 10 Tools for Learning 2021: These are my top 10 tools for learning, both professionally creating learning for others and personally for my own learning.

Evergreen blog posts

As in past years, many of my older posts continue to generate significant traffic–even more than my newer posts. In fact, all of these posts have been viewed over 5,000 times this year. These posts relate to elearning and instructional design more generally, rather than branching scenarios or Twine. Looking at my stats, I see continued interest in instructional design careers. These topics are “evergreen” rather than trendy, so they remain useful for years.

Top 5 posts overall

Time Estimates for eLearning Development: “How long will it take to create this elearning?” It’s important to estimate the effort and time required for different tasks. I originally published this post in 2014, and I have updated it several times since then. This post received the most views of everything on my blog. As of 12/23/21, it’s been viewed over 9500 times this year, and almost 29,000 times since I migrated my site in 2019.

30+ Ideas for eLearning Portfolio Samples: If you need to create samples, use this list to jump start your brainstorming. Target your desired audience. If you want a job creating soft skills training, create customer service samples. If you love software training, create that kind of samples.

Instructional Design Hourly Rates and Salary: How much do instructional designers earn? This post includes rates and salaries from multiple sources. I last updated this post in 2019, so this will be in the queue for a refresh next year.

Name Generators for Learning Scenarios: Use random name generators to quickly create character names for scenarios in learning. Different tools have different purposes and benefits. This post jumped in popularity in the last year, although I’m not quite sure why. This post ranks well for several search terms (e.g., “scenario generator with names,” “diverse name generator”) which seems to be driving traffic.

What does an instructional designer do?: Here’s my definition plus examples of common tasks. This was the original post that helped me build an audience for my blog back in 2007. I updated this post and my original series on instructional design careers in 2019. While the traffic is down on this post (8700 views in 2020 compared with 5800 in 2021), this continues to be a popular post for people considering a career change to ID.

15 years of blogging

My very first blog post was published on 12/26/2006, which means I have now been blogging for 15 years! Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, shared, commented, and emailed me over the last 15 years. I appreciate all the comments, replies, and questions people send me. I have learned so much in this process of public reflection, and I plan to continue with weekly posts in 2022.

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